Long a sea of tolerance that provided a buoyant platform for Muslim immigrants to preach a fundamentalist agenda, Europe seems only now to be waking up to the threat posed by some Muslims intent on bending their host societies to suit themselves.

The original intention, particularly in Britain and France, which admitted large numbers of citizens of their former colonies after granting them independence, was that Muslim immigrants to European shores would assimilate.Many did.But many primitive thinkers flooded into Europe only to be shocked by the enlightened society they encountered.Some groups developed an agenda of imposing their old ways and their religion on their host societies.

In the name of “tolerance”, most societies in the West have done their best to accommodate these malcontents – mostly in defiance of the wishes of their own citizens.Now, the tide is turning.

France has just set the cat among the pigeons by announcing a forthcoming ban on the wearing of the hijab (headscarf)in the classroom. [Front Page Magazine January 23 ’04 issue.]

In many areas ringing the large industrial cities in France, the Muslim population outnumbers the native French, and there is a perception that wearing the hijab is an act of aggression against the host society.Chirac himself, in a moment of rare candor, called it such.

Member of the Senate Jacques Myard, of Chirac’s conservative party, is quoted as saying,“We are facing a genuine political policy that tries to enforce their own Sharia Law on the civil law which is not acceptable."

Eschewing nuance, he also said, “A lot of Muslim girls say that they wear the headscarf freely. But, in fact …in most cases, [they’re] motivated by religious fundamentalists and if you give them just a bit of a finger they will eat up your arm up to the elbow.So we have to be strict and very adamant - and say this is the way things are in France."

Seventy per cent of the French electorate have said amen to that and many moderate Muslims are fully in accord, some of them vocally so.

The first international figure to vocalize the threat of fundamentalism to his own country was Holland’s Pym Fortuyn, a flamboyant millionaire businessman turned politician.Holland had long been the ne plus ultra of a tolerant, libertarian society preaching a multicultural message that was not necessarily endorsed by its citizenry.

Despite the “tolerance” required of the Dutch themselves, the Muslim immigrants were granted special rights and favors that did nothing to encourage assimilation.The government encouraged immigrant children to speak Turkish, Arabic or Berber in primary schools rather than insisting they learn in Dutch.Funding was provided for “ethnic diversity projects”, including 700 Islamic clubs that were sometimes grabbed as showcases by radical clerics.

Assimilation?Forget it!Even now, 30 years later, between 70 and 80 per cent of Dutch-born members of immigrant families import their spouse from their “home” country, mostly Turkey or Morocco, perpetuating a fast-growing Muslim subculture in large cities, according to London’s Daily Telegraph.This means Dutch Muslim men are rejecting Muslim women born in Holland and trawling for someone more ignorant and more obedient from their “home” country.The ones marrying female Dutch-born Muslims are foreign males who pay the girl’s family to use marriage as a ticket into the West .

Fortuyn played a strong hand.A homosexual with a multi-hued history of amours, and with a deputy party leader who was not just black, but an immigrant,the left couldn’t credibly accuse him of racism.He was the first to understand that the rigid and conservative immigrants, who kept themselves apart, wished to demolish the freedoms and tolerance of which Holland was so proud and were thus a threat to Dutch liberal society.He spoke to the fears of a large number of the Dutch who had kept quiet for fear of being branded “racist”.Within a scant three months of forming his conservative party, which called for a moratorium on all immigration until those already in situ were assimilated, the party had already laid claim to 26 of Holland’s 150 seats.

Had he lived, it is likely that he would have won the upcoming election and been Holland’s prime minister today.But he was murdered almost two years ago – ironically, by a leftie animal rights activist, although what animal rights had to do with anything was never explained.So great was the sense of loss, that Fortuyn’s funeral in Rotterdam drew vast crowds and outpourings of grief in an eerie echo of Princess Diana’s funeral in Britain three years previously.

Without his brave and charismatic presence, Fortuyn’s party fell apart, and the then-upcoming election was won by the usual suspects.

And that, you may suppose, was that.

But no.Two years after his assassination, mainstream politicians are beginning to speak out.Referring to the policy of teaching immigrant children in foreign languages instead of Dutch and encouraging immigrants to cleave to their own culture rather than fitting in with Dutch society, the leader of the Christian Democratsrecently said, "Immigrants in the Netherlands top the 'wrong' lists - disability benefit, unemployment assistance, domestic violence, criminality statistics and school and learning difficulties."

And yes, you guessed it.Holland has just become the first country in Europe – perhaps the world - to declare a four-year moratorium on any fresh immigration, including “asylum seekers”.

Another wealthy, tolerant European country, Spain, has also had a bracing flirtation with flinging open the windows and letting fresh air pour into the sour corridors of political correctness.A few days ago, a jury in Barcelona returned a verdict of guilty against a Muslim cleric who had written a book advising men how to beat their wives without leaving marks.

Mohamed Kamal Mustafa, who is the iman of a mosque in a small southern resort town, was sentenced to 15 months in prison and fined around $2,200.He wrote that, to discipline a wife, “The blows should be concentrated on the hands and feet using a rod that is thin and light so that it does not leave scars or bruises on the body.”

Mustafa, who is all heart, cautioned that beating should only be used as a last resort.First should come verbal warnings and if that didn’t work, there should follow a period of sexual inactivity to discipline a disobedient wife.Having seen Mustafa’s photo, I’d say he’d be unwise to invest too much faith in the power of withholding his personal charms to get disciplinary results.

If that failed, he said, according to Islamic law, beatings could be then judiciously administered.

The Spanish judge tore into Mustafa, saying his book was “guided by an obsolete machismo that in places is very accentuated. That is against the principles of equality laid out in the [Spanish] constitution resulting in intolerable discrimination”.And to cap it, he flung in that prospective readers of the book “do not live in the Arabian desert of the 14th century”.So take that, you medieval lunkhead!

Mustafa protested that he was opposed to violence against women.

It was a Spanish human rights group which fought for three years to get Mustafa charged, which is noteworthy, because “human rights” groups commonly side with the multi cultis against civil order and demands that immigrants obey the law of their adopted land rather than the land they fled.

The winds of change are aflutter.

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